Software & Versions

Software is every tool you use: crackers, exploits, firewalls, hashers, viruses, antivirus, collector, and more.

Version decides almost every exchange in the game: your cracker against their hasher, your exploit against their firewall, your antivirus against a virus. Higher number wins, so version is the attribute that settles who beats whom.

Higher isn't always the goal, though. Maxing a tool only pays on the ones that fight those exchanges: your cracker and exploits, where reach is everything, and your collector, where the version is your income multiplier. The earning viruses want the right version for the job, not the highest. A heavier virus earns barely more but uploads slower and won't run on a low-memory host, so you keep a spread and match the copy to the target. The defensive and utility tools (antivirus, hider, seeker, hasher, firewall) are situational, raised to answer a specific threat rather than as a habit, and the Software Ranking page shows what other players are running so you can size that answer instead of guessing.

That strength has a cost: higher versions need more disk to store, more RAM to run, and take longer to upload and download.

Three ways to raise your versions, cheapest first:

• NPCs — download tools straight off them for free, up to whatever version each one carries (the mid-teens for most types). The Riddle Trail, a chain of NPCs that each hand you the tools to crack the next, walks you up through the versions.
• Other players — hacking someone can turn up software you don't have, or higher versions of what you do. Some players also share files on the Download Center, so check it now and then.
• The University — research a file you already own to a higher version for money and time, roughly half an hour per 0.1, paid from a bank account. The Research page covers the cost curve, the shared version cap, and what's worth your money.

Every step up in version makes a file bigger on two fronts at once: more disk to store it, and more RAM to run it. A v1.0 tool is tiny, but a high-version cracker or firewall can reach tens of gigabytes on disk and need gigabytes of RAM just to execute. Both grow as you climb, so a version isn't free even after you've paid for the research.

RAM is the limit people forget. A machine can only run what fits in its memory, so on your own box it caps how much you keep active at once, and on a server it gates what you can install: drop a high-version virus on a low-memory host and it may not have the RAM to run at all. Match the virus to what the host can actually handle.

Size also sets transfer time, because an upload moves at the speed of the connection. A v1.0 virus lands in a few seconds even on a slow server, which is part of why light viruses are easy to plant and clear before anyone notices. A big, high-version file onto a low-bandwidth server crawls, and every extra second is your login sitting in their log.